Archive for September, 2011

Cindy: I picked up Pie (Scholastic 2011) a few months ago to read as a palate cleanser between review books. It had a pie and a cat on the cover and looked like a lighthearted read. I live in Michigan and it was prime berry season when I started writing this post in early August. I didn’t know […]

As any good collection development librarian knows, professional reviews are a must to keep your collection fresh, current, and well-rounded. It also is your backup if a title is challenged on any level. It can be difficult however to learn more about independently published works. ForeWord Reviews a is a print trade journal of book […]

Our staff readers advisory title this month was the Newbery Medal winning title for 2011, Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. Our staff reads a different genre or style each month but has always faithfully included children’s fiction and young adult titles to make sure the adult readers are reading outside their safety zones and […]

(Has anyone ever gone over to your bookshelf, picked up a book, and said, “What is this doing here?” This series of blog posts explains some of the more curious findings on one Booklister’s home shelves.) First off, what a title, right? I think I read about this lesser-known Ramsey Campbell shocker in Stephen King’s […]

A Toby Ball that is. Ball is a writer, activist (working for nonprofits such as The Carbon Coalition and the Crimes Against Children Research Center. Born in DC, raised in Syracuse, NY, he now lives in Durham, New Hampshire. Ball is the author of two excellent period thrillers. Scorch City was just released at the […]

Cindy: This book has everything I need in a picture book: illustrations by Tricia Tusa and a girl on a swing. I can’t pass up a swing set and neither can my oldest daughter. Follow Me (Harcourt 2011) perfectly captures the magical feel of an afternoon spent swinging to the sky and back. The book’s […]

Jane Lynch: my new BFF! Heartfelt audiobook memoir as perfect girl-talk car commute companion. The power of hearing the author sharing every detail of life’s happy accidents? You’ll be driving around the block to spend more time with Jane, as you bond together over her acting insecurities, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and critical success. Happy Accidents […]

It’s time to get your bets down on the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Ladbrokes, the U.K. gambling company that posts odds on just about everything, sees the favorites this way: Syrian poet Adonis is the favorite at 4-1, with Swedish author Thomas Transtromer at 9-2, Thomas Pynchon at 10-1, and Haruki Murakami […]

Next year will be a major celebratory time in Great Britain. On February 6, 2012, the Queen will have sat upon the throne for 60 years, surpassed in that capacity only by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. To be published in January, a new biography, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, by Sally […]

Savvy readers will notice a slight change in this week’s heading. Today we’re shaking up Webcomics Wednesdays by featuring an initiative that will eventually be on the web (and elsewhere). Comics Uniting Nations, a partnership between Reading with Pictures, Project Everyone, and PCI Media (an organization dedicated to producing “entertainment-education”) plans to use the “universal visual […]

Cindy: I know a stack of librarians who will love An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns (2015), by Betsy R. Rosenthal. We’ve read a few collective noun books before and Lynn and I are fans of them all. There’s something about the tidy organizing that must appeal to the librarians in […]

Cindy: Please wash your hands before you read this post! Measles, whooping cough, and now an outbreak of typhus … in youth literature, that is! A few years ago, Lynn and I posted about a fictional Typhoid Mary story, Deadly (2011) by Julie Chibbaro, and I was intrigued about Mary Mallon and her real story. This year […]

Savvy readers will notice a slight change in this week’s heading. Today we’re shaking up Webcomics Wednesdays by featuring an initiative that will eventually be on the web (and elsewhere). Comics Uniting Nations, a partnership between Reading with Pictures, Project Everyone, and PCI Media (an organization dedicated to producing “entertainment-education”) plans to use the “universal visual […]

Cindy: I know a stack of librarians who will love An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns (2015), by Betsy R. Rosenthal. We’ve read a few collective noun books before and Lynn and I are fans of them all. There’s something about the tidy organizing that must appeal to the librarians in […]

Cindy: Please wash your hands before you read this post! Measles, whooping cough, and now an outbreak of typhus … in youth literature, that is! A few years ago, Lynn and I posted about a fictional Typhoid Mary story, Deadly (2011) by Julie Chibbaro, and I was intrigued about Mary Mallon and her real story. This year […]